cabs "spickety cabs," and now everything Panamanian is spickety.
On the side of Ancon Hill, a small volcano, extinct since prehistoric times, between the port of Balboa and the city of Panama, is the American settlement of Ancon. It is a very beautiful town, that has no named or numbered streets, but is like a garden laid out in terraces with pretty little houses here and there, and a big red-tiled administration building for the Governor, and the Canal Commissioners. Here, too, is the Ancon Hospital, built by the French, and a large hotel, called the Tivoli, that is run by the United States Government through the War Department. It was built as a social center for the Americans on the canal force, and they are changed two-thirds as much as the tourists that stop there. The Tivoli would be considered a very good summer hotel anywhere in the United States, and if you want to engage a room there during the dry season, when the flood of visitors is at its height, you had better cable in advance.
Two white posts on either side of the road from the Tivoli to the railroad station mark the Zone line, and the place where a President of the United States first entered foreign territory. That was in 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt drove down the Avenida Central, and made a speech from the steps of the cathedral.
The Avenida Central or Central Avenue—a hundred years ago they called it the Calle Real or the Royal Road—is the great thoroughfare of Panama City. It runs from the railroad station to the Cathedral Plaza. For the first mile or so it passes through the tawdry new
